Study says men and women are wired differently

5th December 2013

A team of scientists from the University of Pennsylvania, US, scanned the brains of nearly 1,000 males and females of all ages and found some interesting differences.

Women scored well on attention, word and face memory, social cognition and multitasking. Men performed better on spatial processing, sensori-motor speed and performing single tasks, say the researchers in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Study author Dr Ruben Gur said: it will "help us better understand the differences between how men and women think" and "the roots of neurological disorders which are often [gender] related".

The study also
came came under fire from critics who highlighted the change that the
connections can go through during a lifetime.

Prof Heidi Johansen-Berg, a UK expert in neuroscience, said the "brain was too complex an organ to be able to make broad generalisations".

Dr Michael Bloomfield, leading Researcher of Clinical Sciences, said it is an "obvious possibility is that that male hormones like testosterone and female hormones like oestrogen have different affects on the brain".

This also raises the question of whether these differences are innate or can be a result of upbringing.